Antiseptics are antimicrobial chemical substances applied to living tissue/skin to reduce possibility of infection, sepsis or putrefaction caused by microorganisms. Disinfectants destroy microorganisms found on non-living objects.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, inspired by Louis Pasteur's germ theory of diseases, doctors Lister, Semmelweis, Tichenor and others introduced antiseptic treatment and surgical methods into their daily work, and initiated a completely new quality of medicine: Open wounds, surgery and infectious diseases no longer led to painful death, but where banned through topical antiseptics, and cured later by internal antibiotics.
From the beginning Pasteur and his followers stipulated that disinfection and antiseptic methods are not 100% effective procedures and have to be verified and classified using the “killing rate” on specific microorganisms reached and attacked by disinfecting agents. Today we apply “fast acting” and “persistent” topical antiseptics, that all should be “broad spectrum”, i.e. effective against a variety of microorganisms.
Fast acting antiseptics are measured by significant reduction in “colony forming units” (CFU) found on cultures obtained some minutes following application of antiseptics. The quality of “persistence” refers to the ability of an antiseptic, to continue to kill germs, once it has been applied to the skin, and is due to retention or binding of chemicals on the skin, after partial evaporation and after rinsing.
Many powerful and fast acting antiseptics have been developed by chemists and applied by doctors and households. Some have been abandoned, because they produced side-effects, others because they where just too inexpensive and not sufficiently profitable to medical industry: A handful, mainly “alcohol-based-hand-rubs” (ABHR), became “gold standards”.